August 2005 archives

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August 30, 2005

third fall registration

by gl. at 6:33 pm

a guy who found me on craigslist who may be the only tuesday night member ("what the heck," he said, "i'd happy to have you as a guide."). may have another nibble for a wednesday morning group, too. crosses fingers

posted by gl. | permalink | categories: artist's way

August 29, 2005

second fall registration!

by gl. at 8:19 pm

i received my second fall registration via the mail today! hooray! i really know very little about him except that he found me via a world cup flyer (the place we have our job club meetings). i'm very glad he also wants a wednesday morning session so shaedra isn't the only one there. one of my former MAC students also wants to also join the Wednesday cluster, but she'll be gone the first three sessions. i wish i had a good alternative for her; i'll tell her about mary & cheri's group.

for anyone who's keeping track: 69 flyer locations, 20 virtual locations, 10 contacts, 2 registrations.

posted by gl. | permalink | categories: artist's way

August 28, 2005

LSGL in H.P. Lovecraft Film Fest!

by sven at 9:15 pm

Well, I haven't received an official acceptance notice -- but the "Let Sleeping Gods Lie" teaser is now listed on the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival schedule! Go check out the website!

...For historical purposes, though, here's what the text there says:

Shorts

Updates coming late August but will include: Arcane, The Call of Cthulhu, The Gibbering Horror of Howard Ghormley, The Lovecraft Syndrome, Ryleh, The Vessel, Late Bloomer, Experiment 17, The King in Yellow, March the 13th, 1941, The Courtesy Nudge, Let Sleeping Gods Lie, The Night of the Octopus, The Statement of Randolph Carter

posted by sven | permalink | categories: exhibits & events, let sleeping gods lie, movies

renovations

by gl. at 9:06 pm

we consolidated a lot of art supplies in the kitchen, in part because our potential storage is underutilized, in part to help give sven some space in "the lab," and in part to share the often-duplicate supplies we have like glue, tape & markers. so some of the kitchen cabinet doors came off and the art we were storing in the bathroom came to live in the main house and the pantry was rearranged.

additional good news: sven hammered the letterpress arm that was bent enough for me to replace the rollers! i suspect these rollers aren't any good anymore because they're gummy, but i'm glad it's now a complete unit. i still don't have a good letterpress setup yet, but this is a huge step closer than i was in march. i am amused to note that the typecases for the letterpress fit perfectly in the oven; finding places for the letterpress supplies & the power tools gives us a lot more counter space.

things that still need to be solved:

posted by gl. | permalink | categories: printing, studio space

August 27, 2005

new poetry catalog

by gl. at 10:56 pm

after 10 anonymous days of driving trixie around without her magnets, she is now replenished! and with them, a new poetry catalog:

trixie first got her magnets to go to burning man two years ago. if we were going to burning man this year, we'd leave tomorrow, so consider this a nostalgic tip o' the hat in honour of all the amazing art & very cool people trixie won't see this year. in addition, scarlet star studios is now a member of the black rock arts foundation. hooray!

posted by gl. | permalink | categories: trixie

August 26, 2005

LSGL painting

by sven at 5:31 pm

Fridays this fall are tentatively "studio days"... So to the studio I went. I was thinking about trying to do a little comic book version of "Let Sleeping Gods Lie" (painted then photocopied) -- but nothing came of it. Instead I got this painting... Which has some nice moments.

It's 10.5" x 13.5", acrylics, in a basic Canson sketch book. I've been trying to get more comfortable with acrylics... I feel like I made some progress today; still haven't found my own voice in the medium, though.

posted by sven | permalink | categories: let sleeping gods lie, painting, sketchbook

August 25, 2005

and and and

by gl. at 11:56 pm

when i facilitate artist's way, i spend a lot of time not actually facilitating: for instance, i'm doing a great deal of promotional work at the moment. some of my time is also spent hooking up w/ people & events that may help me become a better facilitator, by generating a referral for me or from me, inspiring me, or discovering something i can adapt for a cluster exercise. this week i went to three events: meeting w/ the kindly art therapists at artful balance, attending a systemic constellation workshop recommended by another artist's way facilitator, and attending my first secp meeting.

posted by gl. | permalink | categories: artist's way

August 23, 2005

tinkering

by gl. at 11:47 pm

i'm tinkering a little with the blog. wanted to start with the easy things: category tags for each post, a clearer category header, some reshuffling of the sidebar, and hey, look at that! some explanatory text! there's always room for improvement, but you know my motto: something is better than nothing. :)

posted by gl. | permalink | categories: administrivia

August 22, 2005

the song is "suave squirty"

by sven at 10:35 pm

I put together another GarageBand improv tune tonight: suave squirty

The structure is not my best... But there's some neat stuff happening in the rhythm section. Unfortunately, I'm seeing a trend with GB songs where I've put work into the drums: the bass line doesn't move around, it just repeats ad nauseum.

Hm.

posted by sven | permalink | categories: music

August 20, 2005

on word and art word: show ends

by gl. at 9:54 pm

btw, the on word & art word show ended thursday and i went to pick up my pieces yesterday. as we arrived, we saw the curator taking pieces into city hall, a different building than the visual arts gallery, and when we got inside, they were already setting up another show. aiee! so we ran back to the other building and found my pieces in the office of one of gresham's city administrators. it turns out the curator had decided to leave early so he could do a kiln firing.

posted by gl. | permalink | categories: calligraphy, exhibits & events

first fall registration!

by gl. at 9:06 pm

i received my first fall artist's way registration today! thanks, shaedra! shaedra's someone i met at my first job club for creatives meeting, but then she promptly left the group and later contacted me to do some calligraphy for her wedding next month, which i refused in part because i had promised myself august off. :) she was excited about artist's way, though, and had a great time at the (portland) artist's way open studio on thursday.

btw, the mac class became available to register for aug16, but as far as i know nobody's registered for that yet.

posted by gl. | permalink | categories: artist's way

August 18, 2005

artist's way open studio (august)

by gl. at 11:40 pm

5 attendees at tonight's open studio, including a woman who had gone to tonya's first group in may, someone from the mac, and a woman who i had denied doing calligraphic work for three times -- not because i didn't want to work with her, but because i wanted to enjoy my august off. but even though i'm not doing her wedding license, it worked out well -- her wedding needed a big speaker, which sven just happened to have, and so she took it home with her. plus she's almost certainly going to be an artist's way member in fall. yay!

feeling a little swirly headed and possibly sick, which didn't help a small unhappy tension tonight when i asked why one of the attendees had become a foster parent, making her uncomfortable. i'm always interested in foster parents because i was a foster child and i wonder from time to time if i should be a foster parent, too. but she felt "on the spot" and that i was asking "too many personal questions," which made my interactions awkward for the rest of the evening.

we got 7 collages out of 5 people, though. wow!


["we are made whole" -- click the image to see tonight's other collages]

posted by gl. | permalink | categories: artist's way

August 17, 2005

Open The Box

by sven at 10:25 pm

I've been wanting to get better at writing actual stories for animation. I'm so visual, my "stories" tend to be silent... And all my characters have a zen-like sense of peace.

Well, tonight I experimented with writing a script. I brainstormed elements I might want to use by looking through pictures in library books: evil dictator, lots of zombies, a tree, a box, etc... "Box" sparked my imagination. I wrote a five sentence summary. Then I brainstormed lots of things the characters could say to each other, writing stream-of-consciousness. Ex: "What's it like in there? It's cold." I pulled out my fave bits and put them together.

After three hours I'd got as far as recording the voices for the soundtrack and splicing them together. Not enough time for animating, though -- and unfortunately the sound levels are damnably low. Sound capture is always a terrible headache.

Anyway, here's the script. I've added in a few stage directions here to help you make sense of it.

TITLE: OPEN THE BOX

[In a small cube-shaped room, a boy is looking at a large cube-shaped box.]

BOY: Ooh! A present! It’s not my birthday... Knock knock!

[BOY raps on the lid of the box.]

BOX: Who’s there?

BOY: Uh -- who’s there?

BOX: Schrodinger’s cat.

BOY: You’re not a cat.

BOX: Mew... Mew... Mew...

BOY: What are you?

BOX: I’m a metaphor.

BOY: A metaphor? For what?

BOX: Depends. Open the box.

BOY: No.

BOX: Open the box! Open the box! Open the box! Open the box! Open the Box!

BOY: Stop that! Why should I?

BOX: Aren’t you curious? Take a little peek.

BOY: What’s in there?

BOX: Something wonderful.

[BOY opens box. Leaning in too far, he falls into the dark opening. He falls through the nebulae of outer space, stars whizzing by.]

BOY: My god. It’s full of stars!

posted by sven | permalink | categories: movies

August 15, 2005

Mopey goes digital

by sven at 11:24 pm

The critters in "Let Sleeping Gods Lie" are going to be extremely difficult to animate. I've been thinking that I need something simpler to practice on...

Ah -- Mopey, you'll do nicely!

posted by sven | permalink | categories: let sleeping gods lie, movies

the outer limits

by gl. at 9:57 pm

we're having technical difficulties. please stand by.

update: this has been resolved. thank goodness, because sven was biting his lips in anticipation wanting to write about the "mopey method" above.

posted by gl. | permalink | categories: administrivia

LSGL depresses Mopey

by sven at 12:00 pm

My bro, Shield, does comics.

A recurrent character in his art: "Mopey".

Bro takes great pleasure in abusing this poor armless alien. Much to everyone's delight.

Friday bro did a pic inspired by "Let Sleeping Gods Lie"... His caption read "Was thinking of HPL after looking at my brother's HPL project stills."

Cool!! That's what Gretchin would call an "artistic response"!

P.S. Want more of Shield's work? Check out his artblog. "Art daily, updates whenever."

posted by sven | permalink | categories: let sleeping gods lie, movies

August 14, 2005

counting rhymes

by gl. at 11:05 pm

trixie has 225 poetry magnets plus the one that was donated by an anonymous benefactor. i know this because i've just finished washing them all one at a time. whee!

posted by gl. | permalink | categories: trixie

newest trixie poetry

by gl. at 11:22 am

the trip to bend produced a new wave of trixie poetry, though once on 23rd a guy stopped in the crosswalk to rearrange her magnets. i'm planning on washing her today; it'll be like we reset her. :)

tellus.jpg

posted by gl. | permalink | categories: trixie

August 8, 2005

artist's way reunion breakfast

by gl. at 4:17 pm

colleen hosted an artist's way reunion breakfast for the spring05 students and it was really quite lovely. everyone but rob was there, but colleen made us eggs & veggie sausage and had several caffeinated drinks for us to imbibe, and non-caffeinated water w/ cucumber & lime. each item had a large calligraphed label. colleen's house is -full- of art and yet is comfortable and cozy, so we chatted & nibbled for hours. she even gave us gifts as we left -- garden dragonflies and in my case, more collage materials. hooray!

posted by gl. | permalink | categories: artist's way

August 1, 2005

the most expensive minute of my life

by sven at 4:17 am

(except for being handed my diploma)

I started working in earnest on the teaser-trailer on June 29. The grand total of hours put into getting the trailer done: 142. Minus the 3 seconds of black on either side, it's exactly one minute long. That works out to 2 hours 22 minutes (!) of effort for every second of screen time. Which is to say...

I'm DONE!!!

After dinner I called Andrew Migliore and arranged to drop the DVD off at his house tomorrow. The disc is burned, the submission form is filled out, I've just now emailed Andrew my "press kit" materials... As soon as I deliver the deliverables, I'm coming straight home and starting "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince". I get a day off!

Oh, but a few more war stories before I sign off for the night...

Just as I was saving the final sound file -- the software crashed! Fortunately I'd saved recently, and all the tweaks were fresh in my mind. Things were put back in order without much pain.

But better yet: Today -- today of all days -- I filled up my 200 Gig movie-making hard drive! No more room! Very lucky, then, that just a few weeks ago Gretchin juggled some data around and made more space on the Workhorse's hard drive. When I ran out of space, I just started saving new data on the other drive. (Thanks, gl.!)

Today's final tweak: I decided that the teaser would say "coming in 2007" instead of "coming in 2006". It's probably more realistic, and it takes some psychological pressure off me. In terms of the audience, I think it conveys that they should be anticipating this project -- but not get too antsy. If I get it done by 2006, I'm ahead of schedule. If it's not done til 2008 (dear god, no...), people will either have forgotten about it, or understand that it's that big of a project. Gretchin advocated for not naming a completion date at all... There's something to that -- but for my own sanity, I have to believe that this thing will be completed within two years.

I got the first DVD burned by 9:45pm. Finally able to let the excitement creep in, Gretchin and I watched it over and over, alternately squealing and nit-picking. I did something fancy for the DVD menu -- I'm really happy with that (check out the photo above). The lavamen don't look as good as I'd hoped -- the TV screen makes them glow way more than I expected, they lose a lot of subtlety. The brightness level of the TV set makes a huge difference for this film; there are white-whites and black-blacks, and you lose detail on either side of the spectrum if the set's not adjusted right. In the shot where the explorers come into the cave from the blizzard I lose most of the cave entrance -- I failed to respect the "TV safe" boundary. But it's still acceptable.

Overall, I'm both very happy with the results -- and rather disappointed. I'm ecstatic with excitement -- and utterly bored with the teaser. I'm alternately proud, thinking this will wow folks -- and nervous, thinking that they may be non-plussed. With so much sweat and blood in this thing, you gotta expect some complicated emotions.

Wow. I'm done.

posted by sven | permalink | categories: let sleeping gods lie, movies